provision in ungodly ways. If Israel therefore was to be preserved in faithfulness towards God, and attain the end of its calling as the congregation of the Lord, it was necessary that the Lord should make known His counsel and will at the proper time through the medium of prophets, and bestow upon it in sure prophetic words what the heathen nations endeavoured to discover and secure by means of augury and soothsaying. This is the point of view from which Moses promises the sending of prophets in Deu 18:15-18, and lays down in Deu 18:19-22 the criteria for distinguishing between true and false prophets, as we may clearly see from the fact that in Deu 18:9-14 he introduces this promise with a warning against resorting to heathen augury, soothsaying, and witchcraft.
verses 9-11
When Israel came into the land of Canaan, it was “not to learn to do like the abominations of these nations” (the Canaanites or heathen). There was not to be found in it any who caused his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, i.e., any worshipper of Moloch (see at Lev 18:21), or one who practised soothsaying (see at Num 23:23), or a wizard (see at Lev 19:26), or a snake-charmer (see at Lev 19:26), or a conjurer, or one who pronounced a ban (חבר חבר, probably referring to the custom of binding or banning by magical knots), a necromancer and wise man (see at Lev 19:31), or one who asked the dead, i.e., who sought oracles from the dead. Moses groups together all the words which the language contained for the different modes of exploring the future and discovering the will of God, for the purpose of forbidding every description of soothsaying, and places the prohibition of Moloch-worship at the head, to show the inward connection between soothsaying and idolatry, possibly because februation, or passing children through the fire in the worship of Moloch, was more intimately connected with soothsaying and magic than and other description of idolatry.
Verse 12
Whoever did this was an abomination to the Lord, and it was because of this abomination that He rooted out the Canaanites before Israel (cf. Lev 18:24.).
verses 13-14
Israel, on the other hand, was to be blameless with Jehovah (עם, in its intercourse with the Lord). Though the heathen whom they exterminated before them hearkened to conjurers and soothsayers, Jehovah their God had not allowed anything of the kind to them. ואתּה is placed first as a nominative absolute, for the sake of emphasis: “but thou, so far as thou art concerned, not so.” כּן, thus, just so, such things (cf. Exo 10:14). נתן, to grant, to allow (as in Gen 20:6, etc.).
